Columbia Street Lunch is next Sunday, May 6. Please sign-up in the Common Room to offer food and to help at the lunch.

Taize and Iona

A service of meditation, scripture, and prayer with music of Taizé and the Iona Community in Scotland will be Thursday May 3 @ 6:30pm at St. Pat’s This service will offer an opportunity to reflect on concerns of domestic violence, child abuse, and gun violence of recent weeks. Come to experience hope and healing in this season of the Resurrection. This service inspired by Taizé, France and Iona Community of Scotland Worship is a Non-denominational Service in which meditative prayer, scripture, and Songs of Taizé and Iona are used in a relaxed atmosphere where the worshiper will easily become comfortable with the music, scripture, prayers, quiet reflection, and community. The songs are short chants that are repeated several times so one can feel the inner movement of the music and allow themselves to settle into a contemplative worship experience. There is time for silence with meditation and prayer.

Looking Ahead:

May 13 is Mother’s Day. Paula Baines is putting together a nice a coffee hour. If you would like to help her with Coffee Hour, sign up in the Common Room or contact her at paulabaines2011@gmail.com. Additionally, she would like to decoupage and paint small pots and donate a packet of seeds to give away on Mother’s Day. If you are interested in helping; join her on Monday, May 7 at Creative Crafts and Conversation at 6 pm. She will provide the materials and a snack. There will be a second opportunity on Saturday, May 12 at noon in the Shamrock Room.

Pentecost is May 20. Artful Spirit Connection needs your ideas to create a colorful Sanctuary. We need ideas to make bright flames and doves that hang from a wire. You can take home craft materials and instructions after church on May 13 or you can join Paula Baines at Creative Crafts and Conversation on Monday, May 14 at 6 pm. Paula will provide the materials.

Saturday, June 2 is St. Pat’s indoor garage sale. We will need donations as well as help. Donations can be dropped off starting May 28. No sooner, please, as we have groups that use our facility during the week. We will be setting up on Friday, June 1. Time to be determined.

Upcoming Artful Spirit Connection events.

There could puppets in our future. Monica Norris and her father will be joining us for a late Sunday afternoon/early evening for a puppet show. Monica will share information about the puppet ministry that she and her father are a part of at their church. Monica is a middle school teacher who teaches Spanish and cultural studies. She has also taught Sunday School at her church over the last five years. Date and time will be confirmed soon. Stay tuned.

Artful Spirit Connection’s next program is a workshop entitled Introduction to SoulCollage ® scheduled Saturday, June 16 from 12:00- 3:00. Christine Talbott and her colleague, Lisa Cohn will teach this experiential workshop. No talent or materials are required! Just a curiosity as to how you can connect to your soul while up it also can have a lot of fun and fellowship. For more information, see Christine or go to her Facebook Page SoulCollage® Discovering Your Soul’s Personal Wisdom or visit SoulCollage.com.

Faith Linking in Action

Transportation for All: After completing a survey of over 300 bus riders and having met with various local officials, the TFA will present this proposal to the Bangor City Council budget meeting this week: We want to see the planning money for the Community Connector in this budget used in a way that includes:

Testing of specific improvements that riders have asked for. (We’re looking into what the limits are for the Federal planning money, whether it can pay for sample signs, costs of a trial, etc)

A trial of Designated Stops—temporary signs could be put up with a trial of later hours—

Easier access to discount fares—i.e. senior passes

Research specifically on how to extend service hours: Questions include how to shift maintenance to nighttime, which routes to extend hours on, what the evening schedule would look like, etc..

There is a forum for bus riders and drivers to give substantive input into the research and planning

There’s a plan for how and when the findings will be implemented! Nex large group Transportation for All meeting will be May 17 @11 am at Hammond Street Congregational Church.

Childcare/Jobs Team are working with the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children and the Maine Discovery Museum to offer a Free Family Festival Saturday, April 28 from 2-4pm at the Discovery Museum for children up to 8 years old. This is in conjunction with the Week of the Young ChildTM. Take one of the flyers from the Common Room. Want to volunteer? We still need help. Contact maryann_perry@hotmail.com or ptpeg2014@gmail.com (Peg Olson) if you can offer 1½ hours of your time.

Food Access Committee. This is the newest exciting news for St. Pats. We have received a grant from the Diocese to help FLIA expand the gardening program. As part of that we will expand our little raised bed garden. Because of all our work with Living Local and the mandate for the congregation to “let’s get moving and actually do something!” we are ready to roll. We have neighbors interested in this garden project. Lots of planning and hard work ahead. WHO IS IN? One immediate need is for people to help build more raised beds at various locations in the Bangor/Brewer area…including here. This will happen within the next few weeks.

Nursery volunteers needed. Our roster of nursery volunteers is dwindling, requiring our volunteers to volunteer more frequent Sundays. Could you spare a Sunday and get to know our next generation of Episcopalians? We have very simple lessons for our older children lasting 10-15 minutes. Men are most welcome! It’s easy and fun! Please let Pat Blethen or Christine Talbott know if you are interested.

Prayer List: You may make changes to the prayer list at any time. Please send your notice to maryann_perry@hotmail.com .